Gift certificates to various stores or restaurants are a popular gift idea for birthdays or the holidays. They allow the sender to give a gift from a store at which the sender knows the recipient enjoys shopping, while relieving the sender of the burden of selecting a specific item of the right size or according to the tastes of the recipient. A gift certificate to a restaurant enables the recipient to enjoy a meal at the selected restaurant with whomever the recipient chooses. Gift certificates may be purchased in incremental amounts as determined by the vendor, or in any amount desired by the purchaser.
In the prior art, gift certificates were essentially a paper-based, printed IOU issued by the store, and coming in a variety of different shapes and sizes, according to the preferences of the vendor. Typically, the gift certificate was presented to the recipient in a matching envelope from the vendor, along with a greeting card appropriate for the occasion as selected by the sender.
Recently, the gift certificates issued by many retailers, merchants, service providers, etc. have evolved into a form similar to debit cards, having a magnetic stripe, bar code, or other read/write capability. The new generation of gift certificates are more uniformly sized and shaped similarly to credit/debit cards and are “refillable,” so as to be reusable by the recipient as an access card for a pre-paid, declining balance-type account. Moreover, the capability to automatically update the value of the card enables the vendor to avoid having to issue a new or replacement certificate, or to cash out any remainder if the recipient does not use the whole amount at once.